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Southeast Asia
Peace In Mindanao If Muslims Given Their Lebensraum Dues
2006-02-03
Manila, 3 Feb. (AKI) - Lasting peace will only come to the Philippines' restive, mostly Muslim Mindanao region, if the country's Muslims are granted their full rights, no matter what the outcome of this weekend's talks between the government and separatist rebels, experts say. "The biggest stumbling block to peace in Mindanao remains the feeling amongst our Muslim brothers that they are [treated] as second-class citizens both politically and economically," says Jose Bayani Baylon, a Manila-based political analyst.
"We needs our own state or else!"

Saturday's "informal" meeting in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia is the seventh between representatives of the Manila government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) since formal talks were broken off by former Filipino president Joseph Estrada. Both sides have in recent weeks said that they are close to signing an agreement that will end the 40-year-long conflict which has claimed an estimated 120,000 lives.
40 years this go-around, the United States was fighting their great grandfathers when we ran the place. I think they were fighting the Spanish before that. They just don't play well with others
Much of the optimism derives from the apparent resolution of the issue of the so-called "ancestral domain" - territory which Muslims have historically regarded as theirs, but which is now mostly inhabited by Christians.

The population of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines archipelago was almost wholly Muslim or animist until the Manila government started after World War II to encourage people from other regions to migrate there. Today Muslims make up a mere 18 pecent of the island's population. "In part this [position] is due to the Manila-centric policies of [successive] governments, but it is also due to the corrupt practices of Filipino Muslim political leaders over the years," says Baylon.

The failure of past accords between Manila and the MILF's predecessor, the Moro National Liberation Front, don't augur well for the current round of talks, Baylon says. "Add to this the growing militancy of Islam in the country, which is the only [mostly] Catholic nation in Asia, and you have the ingredients for a highly volatile situation," he says.

Mindanao's separatist tendencies are rooted in a profound sense of Muslim alienation, agrees Zainudin S. Malang, director of Mindanao's Bangsamoro Center for Law and Policy.
They alienate pretty much everyone...., oh, that's not what he meant?
Research has shown that Muslims are systematically shut out of jobs or study opportunities on account of their faith. Results of a study carried out by the Philippine Human Development Network, showed that 55 percent of Filipinos think that Muslims are more "prone to run amok", that Muslims are probably terrorists or extremists (according to 47 percent of the sample group surveyed).
"Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris: Amok is "a variant spelling of amuck -- actually much closer to the Malayan word 'amoq,' from which it is derived. The word was originally used to describe the actions of Maylayan tribesmen who, frenzied by hatred and hashish, would rush furiously into hand-to-hand combat." And these would be the ancestors or relatives of the Philippine muslims
"Pro-independence sentiments arise out of a lack of feeling of belonging, of being outcasts, of being second class citizens to whom concessions are only made grudgingly," says Malang. "Prejudice by the largely Christian 'body-politic' rears its ugly head in the media, and other sectors of civil society." As for the latest attempt to end the fighting, Malang said he believes that signing a peace agreement will be the easy part, but that it would be very hard for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to "sell" the deal to a the largely hostile population.

Muslims meanwhile remain inadequately represented in the two-house parliament, where out of 236 members of Congress, only 12 are Muslim. There are no Muslims in the Senate. Mindanao is among the poorest regions in the Philippines with most of its meagre external investments coming from abroad rather than from other parts if the country.
Posted by:

#7  sans Hashish
Posted by: Frank G   2006-02-03 23:15  

#6  "18%" is a majority???

It's islamic math. Just divide by zero.
Posted by: ed   2006-02-03 23:12  

#5   Amok is well known among Christians.

I b'lieve that when the Vikings employed the techniques, they were called berserkers.
Posted by: trailing wife   2006-02-03 23:07  

#4  "18%" is a majority???
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2006-02-03 22:58  

#3  Some comments -

Baylon is a Muslim apologist, sort of a Filipino Ward Churchill.

Mindanao was not mostly Muslim in 1945; it has been receiving Christian settlers for hundreds of years. All its major cities were Christian early last century.

Philippine Muslims are not deprived; they are ignored, for good reasons. They typically do not welcome business investment in their areas. What they really want is free land and tribute, essentially.

Their "ancestral domain" is populated with millions of Christian settlers.

The hard sell here is going to be the Christian majority in Mindanao. There are a lot more of them than Muslims, and they are feisty.

Amok is common to all Malays, which includes both Christian and Muslim Filipinos. Amok is well known among Christians.
Posted by: buwaya   2006-02-03 22:50  

#2  frenzied by hatred and hashish

Yes, and in that order.
Posted by: Seafarious   2006-02-03 16:11  

#1  You want your rights? Sure. Here ya' go.

Bang!

You have the right to remain dead. Anything you might have had to say wasn't worth listening to anyway. You have the right to a shallow grave. You have the right to be wrapped in pigskin and tossed casually into that grave. You have the right to have dirt shovelled in your face. You hae the right to now remain forecer silent.

Thanks. Have a nice day.


Posted by: FOTSGreg   2006-02-03 15:55  

00:00